My Aussie mate Leo Power (from Osaka) was arriving for two days of boarding and mischief that morning (frikken early too) so I dragged him straight to the gondola only to find it was out of action due to high winds at the top. So we moved over to the lift that leapfrogs you over to the next beginners fields area. It hadn’t snowed for three days and sunday was a scorcher with winds, so we queued up with at one of the shorter queues and worked on our racoon-tans while we waited. Leo had never had a lesson but had boarded before, so I couldn’t help myself downloading everything I could remember from my last private turns lesson fron Thredbo. Leo said it helped a million and he seemed to improve as the day went on.

Leo had brought some green tea with him (hows that for lucky!!!) so we found a secluded spot amongst some trees and watched the tree tops sway while listening to the echoy ski announcer girls weird voice bounce around us. We then came back to another chair that would take us higher and eventually tried our luck at taking short cuts down steep bits along the roads edge on the way back. To keep our spirits up because of the gondola closures, we started ducking some ropes to a powdery steep spot. Once that was tracked out, we took the road a long ways down past a few fields to an area I hadn’t tried before, it was a long field, not many punters (especially as the day grew older) and Leo worked on his “just going straight so I can go really really fast manouver” it worked well and we both tried a few jumps with different levels of success and many laughs.

We ducked some ropes and tried some snow covered rice paddy fields that went down the hill like steps. Please see the scene of Jack Thompson just before he gets shot to understand the expression on our faces as we dropped down each sudden step, it goes something like “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!” That evening as we took the shuttle bus back, I told Leo I hadn’t had a bad monday yet and the snow gods would surely pour down their magic tonight. It started raining at about 8pm so we prayed this meant snow higher up, but it was a warm rain….hmmm